Portraiture Quotes

If a figure doesn't look back at you, you forget it.

— Nathan Oliveira

My approach to portraiture is conceptual.

— Amy Sherald

Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.

— Jamie Wyeth

All art is self-portraiture.

— Kehinde Wiley

There is no self-portrait of me.

— Gustav Klimt

I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front.

— Paul Cezanne

Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.

— Vincent Van Gogh

To get someone to pose, you have to be very good friends and above all speak the language.

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I never could have predicted that I would have done something that could be called portraiture.

— Laurie Simmons

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

— Antony Sher

One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I do not care to paint portraits indoors. I cannot feel sympathetic.

— Joaquin Sorolla

What I remember about being painted was a very severe atmosphere. I remember her intensity and sharp glance.

— Andrew Neel

My nose isn't big. I just happen to have a very small head.

— Jimmy Durante

I want to paint men and women with that something of the external which the halo used to symbolize, and which we…

— Vincent Van Gogh

Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only…

— Philippe Halsman

It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in…

— Samuel Rutherford

Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage.

— Jonathan Franzen

There's no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other. There's always a difference. We all have…

— Edouard Manet

Portraiture keeps me humble. It's simple and straightforward. There is nothing more interesting I can make up than the figure sitting right…

— Jemima Kirke

After 20 years of painting wildlife subjects in acrylic, I felt the need for a change and began to explore portraiture and…

— Ron Parker

Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter…

— E. M. Forster

I try to paint from life, but I had such a miserable experience with Bonaparte, who wouldn't sit still and kept mumbling…

— Roman Genn

I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a…

— John Singer Sargent

A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tyree was a dreamer who painted idealized women in idyllic South Pacific landscapes, the faces of wizened island men and later exotic…

— C.J. Cook

Artists with the lack of proper education and experience of working from life will copy whatever is visible on the photograph, without…

— Igor Babailov

In a sense, every work you do is a self-portrait because your paintings always reveal more about you than about your subject.…

— Richard Schmid

What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is…

— August Wilhelm von Schlegel

And there's even a lord named Lord Dashwood [like the characters in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility]. It's very steeped in Austen.…

— Jerusha Hess

In the years since The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Voinovich has sharpened his satire, and Monumental Propaganda is…

— Ken Kalfus

“You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait…

— Hope Mirrlees

Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally…

— Toyin Odutola

The person portrayed and the portrait are two entirely different things.

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

A competent portraitist knows how to imply the profile in the full face.

— Aldous Huxley

If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.

— Francis Bacon

I don't have lots of things in the background. I do like large faces, I find them strong and contemporary.

— Paul Emsley

Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls... if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.

— Alice Neel

You have no idea what portrait painters suffer from the vanity of their sitters.

— Kenneth Clark

The thing that's fascinating about portraiture is that nobody is alike.

— Imogen Cunningham